Jamey Johnson is still mourning the loss of Toby Keith, and likely will for a long, long time. While most people say they miss his singing, or his songwriting, Johnson feels Keith’s absence in a much more personal way.
“Dark humor,” Johnson tells Saving Country Music, revealing the thing he misses the most from Keith, who passed away in 2024 from stomach cancer. “That’s the best way I can describe it. He had a uniquely dark sense of humor.”
Johnson also misses Keith’s presence in country music, and regrets that Keith was taken before they got to make more music together.
“I miss his example more than anything,” Johnson shares. “I was learning a whole lot, and he and I were talking about going on tour together. We’d also been batting around some song lyrics. One time on a golf course, he asked me, ‘Why don’t we do 365?’ [meaning] 365 concert dates in a row. He was never going to give up. He was one of those guys who made you find the fighter in yourself.”
Johnson released Midnight Gasoline last November, his first record in 12 years, and a record he might not have made if not for the loss of Keith.
“The writing was already coming back to me, piece by piece, but I still didn’t have any ambitions on making a record,” Johnson tells Billboard. “When Toby passed away, it moved everything into high gear because I realized that that was the end of his discography, that we weren’t getting another Toby Keith record. And that’s what drove me to wanting to finish my own discography. It’s what made me understand that I’m nowhere near done, and so it’s time to get busy. After he passed away, I immediately started talking about this session and started trying to get all the particulars in order. It was time for me to get in the studio again.”
Johnson and Keith were working on a song they didn’t get to finish before Keith passed away. If they had been able to complete it, it likely would have been without a lyric sheet, at least for Keith.
“Toby Keith had one of the most amazing memories of anybody,” Johnson recounts. “I mean, perfect recall on lyrics he hasn’t seen or heard in 34 years. [He] remembers every chord, remembers every word. He could remember names, faces, conversations, ideas, just an infinite stream of memory. And as a songwriter, he was very picky about phrases he would use. If it didn’t sound like his vernacular, it had to change until it fit right because he wasn’t going to put something in there that didn’t sound the way he would talk.”
There might have been a big gap between Johnson making albums, but not anymore. The 50-year-old is already working on another record, and it’s a massive one.
“There’s another 50 songs by now,” Johnson explains. “I’ve got some songs in the pile that I’m just absolutely proud of. I’ve got this one I like called ‘Never Gonna Be.’ I didn’t write this song. Ronnie Dunn wrote it, but he wrote it about me in 2009. It’s an aggressive track. I’ve been working with numerous different producers. I’ve still got a bunch of tracks from Dave Cobb, and I’ve got a ton of tracks with Buddy Cannon, and I’ve got to work with Kyle Lehning. He produced all the Randy Travis stuff. And we’ve got some stuff from the Kent Hardly Playboys (Johnson’s backing band).”
Find Midnight Gasoline and all of Johnson’s music and upcoming shows at JameyJohnson.com.